How to Clean Your Refrigerator

This week for the decluttering challenge, we are headed to the refrigerator. The holiday season is well over, as is the big “football” weekend, and that poor fridge has been working hard. Let’s give it a little TLC.

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This week’s challenge is pretty straight forward. It’s time to clean out the fridge. Here’s what you need:

Cooler

Trash bin

Wash tub or bucket of warm, soapy water

sponge or dish rag

cloth or paper towels

Week 6: The Fridge

Pull all of the contents out of your refrigerator. Your kitchen table or a cleared counter is the perfect place to do this. All of the items from your freezer should go into the cooler. All of the rest of the items from the fridge should sit together on your table to keep each other cool.

Turn off the fridge so it isn’t running while you clean. I do this because as I’m trying to clean out the freezer, the soapy water will freeze to the sides as I’m trying to clean. That is completely counter-productive. You’ll be able to work much faster if you just turn it off. Then too, the fridge isn’t running because the doors are open while you are cleaning.

Use the dish rag/sponge and your warm soap water to wipe down and clean all of the surfaces of the fridge, the shelves, the doors, the walls, the storage areas.

Remove the produce/dairy drawers and clean underneath these as well.

Clean our the freezer the same way.

Use the cloth or paper towels to dry our the fridge.

Turn the fridge back on.

Wash and dry the produce/dairy drawers. Return them to the fridge.

Now it’s time to look at all of the food that you took out of the fridge./freezer. Go through the condiments. Do you remember even buying all of them? Purge all of the old foods, sauces, jellies and such that have been taking up real estate and turning into possible science projects in your refrigerator. Check those expiration dates and “use within” information, too. Return all of the good, fresh food back to your clean fridge.

Now you have a nice, clean fridge, that probably suddenly looks a lot bigger too!

Have any great tips for cleaning or organizing your fridge or freezer? Share them below.